Lost Sibling: Foreign Relations

It was late May and it was hot. Momma sat in a beat-up chair in my stifling dorm room watching me pack. In 24 hours, I would head home to Silver Spring, Maryland, a graduate of Colby College. As I crammed books into a box, Momma rose, then plopped her plump body back into the chair. Something was eating at her.

She cleared her throat. "There's something I wanna tell you." She exhaled. "Before I married your father," she said, speaking slowly, choosing her words carefully, "when I was 19, I had a child."

Did she say what I thought she said? I wanted to ask her to repeat herself, but the hangdog look on Momma's usually sunny face silenced me. "Oh," I managed.

"A girl," Momma went on, her voice suddenly raspy, its usual cheeriness lost. "But Lacie"—Momma's mother—"wouldn't let me keep her. I had to give her up."

"You mean adoption?"

"Yes. This family that lived nearby, they took her in and raised her. I didn't know what else to do. I was just a baby myself." She inspected her hands, massaging her jeweled fingers. "You have another sister."

It seemed impossible. I already had three siblings, all older. Now there were five of us? How come I hadn't known?

Momma must have read my mind. "You weren't supposed to know. Nobody was. I wouldn't be telling you now except she got in touch with me a few weeks ago. She wants to get to know me, the family. I told her all about you. She said she can't wait to meet her baby brother."

Me her baby brother? This from a woman I didn't even know?

"You look mad," said Momma. "You ain't mad at me, are you?"

Was I? I wasn't sure. But whatever I was feeling was trumped, I told myself, by her pain at surrendering her firstborn.

"I'm not mad," I said. "I'm just amazed you kept quiet so long. That must've been horrible. I'm sorry you had to give up—um, what's her name?"

"Brenda."

"Yes, Brenda. Of course I want to meet her." By saying it, I thought I could make myself mean it.

In fact, I would not meet Brenda for another eight years. Meanwhile, I put her out of my mind. I moved away and started working as a reporter. During a visit home just before my 30th birthday, I walked into the TV room as Momma hung up the phone. "That was Brenda," she said.

"Who?" Only after the word had left my lips did the name synch up with the person.

"My daughter. Remember?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"She's coming over tomorrow," said Momma. "I told her you were here. She wants to meet you."

"Sure. That's fine." I tried to convince myself it would be. But what if I hated her?

The next day, I got home to find a maroon minivan parked in the driveway. Inside was a woman with dark chocolate skin, brown eyes and a short Jheri-Curled afro. Brenda. I pored over her face, but nothing stood out as a family feature.

"Well, I'll be," she said, head cocked. "He looks just like you, Mom."

Brenda called Momma "Mom"? And Momma didn't stop her? Then it dawned on me: Brenda and Momma had been spending time together.

The realization knocked me off balance. I had wanted to talk to Brenda, but seeing them together I couldn't muster the will to speak. Brenda talked about how the eldest of her three children was starting to think about college, how her catering business was picking up, how she and Momma both loved collard greens and pig's feet with lots of vinegar. It was as if they'd known each other their entire lives. I focused on the TV.

Later, Momma asked me how I thought it had gone. I wanted to tell her it had been one of the most excruciating experiences I'd been through in a long while. Instead, I lied. "Fine. She seems nice."

"She is. I wish I'd seen her grow up."

I tried to fit Brenda into the picture book of my youth, but the pages were full. Why was Momma asking me to love someone I hardly knew? She loved Brenda so much, and she wanted me to share her feelings.

Then one day it clicked: By spending time with only some of her children, Momma had viewed her life as incomplete. She just wanted us all to get along.

I began to view Brenda as someone who could bring the family together, not tear us apart. I moved back home with Momma, realizing I missed her too much. One day I was preparing a flowerbed for her when Brenda showed up.

"Hey, there," I said, picking at the dirt under my fingernails.

"What're you planting?"

"Dahlias. Maybe gladioli. Momma says they remind her of her childhood."

"Oh, that should be nice." Brenda grinned. It was a beautiful smile. It looked, I suddenly saw, kind of like Momma's.

A few months later, Brenda brought her children to have steamed crabs with us. We sat outside at a picnic table covered in newspapers cracking shells with wooden mallets as wasps hovered. Brenda never flinched, merely waving them away with a spice-covered hand.

"Ain't you gonna eat?" she asked me.

"No," said Momma. "He don't like 'em."

"Not me," said Brenda. "I love some crabs."

"I can tell," I said, pointing to a strand clinging to her chin. She brushed it off, then burst out laughing. In that laughter too was a cadence that reminded me of Momma. When Brenda left, I gave her a hug. It felt like any hug you'd offer someone you'd cared about your whole life.

Soon after, Momma told me that Brenda was in the hospital with lupus. I did some reading and discovered that lupus causes the body's immune system to attack itself. Black women with lupus die three times more often than white women. Damn it. Brenda. I didn't want her to die. Back home, I told Momma what I'd read. She nodded the whole while, as if already resigned to losing her child again.

Death arrived swiftly. Two months later, Brenda was gone. Momma had lost her first child, then gotten her back only to lose her again. I was surprised at the hole it ripped in my life. Momma seemed exhausted. Every sentence she uttered was followed by a deep sigh; the only expression she could muster, a blank stare.

Walking into Momma's kitchen soon after, I noticed a picture on the corkboard.

"Hey," I called out. "This is Brenda!"

Momma got out of her La-Z-Boy and stood by my side. "I put it up after she died," she said.

"It's nice."

"Yeah, she looks pretty." Together we admired the obituary with Brenda's sweet face. "You know she loved you, don't you?"

"I felt the same," I said. "Why wouldn't I? She was my sister." It felt good to know that this time, I wasn't pretending.